An unexpected hike in New York City
Island’s new man-made hills offer spectacular views
NEW YORK— Four new hills built on New York City’s Governors Island offer sweeping views of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, unique places to hike and climb, and massive slides that dwarf those found on any playground.
Set to open Tuesday, the four-hectare park called the Hills at Governors Island is the newest piece of the redevelopment of the once off-limits former U.S. army and coast guard base in the heart of New York Harbor.
The four hills, built in part with fill and debris from demolition of the island’s old barracks, range from seven metres to 21metres high, and have been lushly planted with trees, shrubs and grasses by New Yorkbased Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects.
One, aptly named Slide Hill, has four stainless-steel chutes that run as long as 17 metres.
“One of the signatures of Governors Island is this idea that play is for everyone,” Leslie Koch, president of the trust created by the city to oversee redevelopment of 60 hectares of the island.
“There’s no age limit. Adults are invited to play, not just children.”
Gulls cawed overhead as Koch de- scribed how the hills were designed to take advantage of the island’s 360degree vantage point, offering views not only of New York’s skyscrapers and Lady Liberty, but of burgeoning Jersey City, New Jersey and the Brooklyn and Verrazano bridges.
“With each foot that you go up the hills, you get more and more,” Koch said.
The Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8, based in Rotterdam, de- signed the park.
Designer Adriaan Geuze said the pathways that wind around the park’s hills create “conceal and reveal” vistas that elicit a sense of anticipation.
Outlook Hill, at 21 metres the highest point on the island, can be ascended by strolling up a sloping path or by climbing over granite blocks salvaged from the island’s old seawall.
Other hills include the gently sloping Grassy Hill and Discovery Hill, home to a site-specific art installation called Cabin, by the British artist Rachel Whiteread. The concrete shed is meant to evoke a Thoreau-like retreat overlooking the busy metropolis.
Governors Island was off limits to ordinary New Yorkers during most of the past 200 years, and Koch said the redevelopment over the past de- cade has been aimed at making it part of the “living, breathing city.”
The island gets an average of 2,100 visitors on weekdays and 6,000 on Saturdays and Sundays.
Other attractions include tours of Castle Williams, a 19th-century fort built to prepare for a British attack, bike trails and Hammock Grove, which has playgrounds for children and 50 hammocks for their parents to relax.